> The Articles of Confederation were designed to give limited power to a weak federal government and more power to stronger state governments. It was a disaster, then we tried again - the other way - with the Constitution.
The country thrived under the Constitution with a narrow interpretation of the commerce clause and a federal government that spent 3% of GDP instead of 20% for more than a hundred years.
The expansive "reinterpretation" of federal power in the 20th century was the source of all the existing trouble.
I would posit that those outcomes had more to do with scientific progress than with whether social security or the ban on leaded gasoline are implemented at the federal level versus the states.
And a significant amount of that progress was funded by the government, relied on discoveries funded by government, or were made by people who lived or were educated because of government funding.
Which part of research funding requires it to be done at the federal level rather than the states?
If anything we're under-funding it now for precisely that reason. The federal government extracts money from every state's tax base and then spends it on the F-35. Whereas the states have to compete with each other for talent, so California given their proportion of the same money would want to give it to UCLA or Berkeley to attract the sort of high-earning taxpayers who want to send their kids to those schools or graduate from them and stay in the state, or cause local research grant recipients to put down roots and found successful companies. And so would all the others.
The country thrived under the Constitution with a narrow interpretation of the commerce clause and a federal government that spent 3% of GDP instead of 20% for more than a hundred years.
The expansive "reinterpretation" of federal power in the 20th century was the source of all the existing trouble.